hewitt examined the boots and shoes with great rapidity, but with a singularly quick eye for peculiarities.
“he liked a light shoe,” he said, “and he preferred to wear shoes rather than boots. there are few boots, and those not much worn, although he was living in the country. trod square on the right foot, inward on the left, and wore the left heel more than the right. it’s plain he hated nails, for these are all hand-sewn, with scarcely as much as a peg visible in the lot; and they are all laced, boots and shoes alike. come, this is the best-worn pair; it is also a pair of the same sort the maid tells me he must have been wearing, since they are missing; low shoes, laced; we’ll take them with us.”
we left the house and sought our friend the coachman. he pointed out quite clearly the path by which his master had gone on his last walk; showed us the gate, still fastened, over which he had climbed to gain the adjoining meadow, and put us in the way of finding the small wood and the barn.
both within and without the gate there was a small patch bare of grass, worn by feet; and here martin hewitt picked up his trail at once.
“the ground has hardened since thursday night,” he said; “and so much the better — it keeps the marks for us. do you see what is here?”
there were footmarks, certainly, but so beaten and confused that i could make nothing of them. hewitt’s practised eye, however, read them as i might have read a rather illegibly written letter.
“here is the right foot, plain enough,” he said, carefully fitting the shoe he had brought in the mark. “he alighted on that as he came over the gate. half over it is another footmark — bowmore’s, i expect, for i can see signs of others, in both directions — going and coming. but we shall know better presently.”
he rose, and we followed the irregular track across the meadow. like most such field-tracks, its direction was plainly indicated by the thin and beaten grass, with a bare spot here and there. hewitt troubled to take no more than a glance at each of these spots as we passed, but that was all he needed. the meadow was bounded by a hedge, with a stile; and at the farther side of this stile my friend knelt again, with every sign of attention.
“a little piece of luck,” he reported. “the left shoe has picked up a tiny piece of broken thorn-twig just here. see the mark? the shoe was a little soddened in the sole by this time, and the thorn stuck. i hope it stuck altogether. if it did it may help us wonderfully when we get to the barn, for the trouble there will be the trampling all round of the people at the fire.”
so we went on till we reached the edge of the little wood. the field-path skirted this, and here hewitt dropped on his knees and set to work with great minuteness.
“keep away from the track, brett,” he warned me, “or you may make it worse. the police have been here, i see, and quite recently, coming from the direction of redfield. here are two pairs of unmistakable police boots and another heavy pair with them; no doubt they brought the gamekeeper along with them, to have things fully explained.”
from the corner of the wood to a point forty yards along the path; back to the corner again, and then into the wood hewitt went, carefully examining every inch of the ground as he did so. then at last he rejoined me.
“i think the gamekeeper has told the truth,” he said. “it’s pretty plain, thanks to the soft ground hereabout, notwithstanding the policemen’s boots. here they came together — the thorn-twig sticks to the shoe still, you see — and here they stopped. the marks face about, and bowmore’s steps are retraced to the corner of the wood. peytral’s turn again and go on, and bowmore’s turn into the edge of the wood and come along among the trees. you don’t see them in the grassy parts quite as well as i do, i expect, but there they are. we’ll keep after peytral’s prints. bowmore’s come back in the same track, i see.”
the next stile led to penn’s meadow. this meadow — a large one — stretched over a rather steep hump of land, at the other side of which the barn stood. from the stile two paths could be discerned — one rising straight over the meadow in the direction of the barn, and the other skirting it to the left, parallel with the hedge.
“here the footprints part,” hewitt observed, musingly; “and what does that mean? man[oe]uvring — or what?”
he thought a moment, and then went on: “we’ll leave the tracks for the present and see the barn. that is straight ahead, i take it.”
when we reached the top of the rise the barn came in view, a blackened and sinister wreck. the greater part of the main structure was still standing, and even part of the thatched roof still held its place, scorched and broken. off to the right from where we stood the village roofs were visible, giving indication of the position of the road to redfield. a single human figure was in sight — that of a policeman on guard before the barn.
“now we must get rid of that excellent fellow,” said hewitt, “or he’ll be offering objections to the examination i want to make. i wonder if he knows my name?”
we walked down to the barn, and hewitt, assuming the largest possible air, addressed the policeman.
“constable,” he said, “i am here officially — here is my card. of course you will know the name if you have had any wide experience — london experience especially. i am looking into this case on behalf of miss peytral — co-operating with the police, of course. where is your inspector?”
he was a rather stupid countryman, this policeman, but he was visibly impressed — even flurried — by hewitt’s elaborate bumptiousness. he saluted, tried to look unnaturally sagacious, and confessed that he couldn’t exactly say where the inspector was, things being put about so just now. he might be in throckham village, but more likely he was at redfield.
“ah!” hewitt replied, with condescension. “now, if he is in the village, you will oblige me, constable, by telling him that i am here. if he is not there, you will return at once. i will be responsible here till you come back. don’t be very long, now.”
the man was taken by surprise, and possibly a trifle doubtful. but hewitt was so extremely lofty and so very peremptory and official, that the inferior intelligence capitulated feebly, and presently, after another uneasy salute, the village policeman had vanished in the direction of the road. the moment he had disappeared hewitt turned to the ruined barn. the door was gone, and the scorched and charred lumber that littered the place had a look of absolute ghostliness — perhaps chiefly the effect of my imagination in the knowledge of the ghastly tragedy that the place had witnessed. well in from the doorway was a great scatter of light ashes — plainly the pea-straw that the coachman had spoken of. and by these ashes and partly among them, marked in some odd manner on the floor, was a horrible black shape that i shuddered to see, as hewitt pointed it out with a moving forefinger, which he made to trace the figure of a prostrate human form.
“did you never see that before in a burnt house?” hewitt asked in a hushed voice. “i have, more than once. that sort of thing always leaves a strange stain under it, like a shadow.”
but business claimed martin hewitt, and he stepped carefully within. scarcely had he done so, when he stood suddenly still, with a low whistle, pointing toward something lying among the dirt and ashes by the foot of that terrible shape.
“see?” he said. “don’t disturb anything, but look!”
i crept in with all the care i could command, and stooped. the place was filled with such a vast confusion of lumber and cinder and ash that at first i failed to see at all what had so startled hewitt’s attention. and even when i understood his direction, all i saw was about a dozen little wire loops, each a quarter of an inch long or less, lying among a little grey ash that clung about the ends of some of the loops in clots. even as i looked another thing caught hewitt’s eye. among the straw-ashes there lay some cinders of paper and card, and near them another cinder, smaller, and plainly of some other substance. hewitt took my walking-stick, and turned this cinder over. it broke apart as he did so, and from within it two or three little charred sticks escaped. hewitt snatched one up and scrutinised it closely.
“do you see the tin ferrule?” he said. “it has been a brush; and that was a box of colours!” he pointed to the cinder at his feet. “that being so,” he went on, “that paper and card was probably a sketch-book. brett! come outside a bit. there’s something amazing here!”
we went outside, and hewitt faced me with a curious expression that for the life of me i could not understand.
“suppose,” he said, “that mr. victor peytral is not dead after all?”
“not dead?” i gasped; “but — but he is! we know ——”
“it seems to me,” hewitt pursued, with his eyes still fixed on mine, “that we know very little indeed of this affair, as yet. the body was unrecognisable, or very near it. you remember what the coachman said? ‘if it wasn’t for mr. peytral’s being missing,’ he said, ‘i doubt if they’d have known it was him at all.’ i think those were his exact words. more, you must remember that the body has not been seen by either of peytral’s relatives.”
“but then,” i protested, “if it isn’t his body whose is it?”
“ah, indeed,” hewitt responded, “whose is it? don’t you see the possibilities of the thing? there’s a colour-box and a sketch-book burned. who carried a colour-box and a sketch-book? not peytral, or we should have heard of it from his daughter; she made a particular point of her father’s evening strolls being quite aimless, so far as her knowledge or conjecture went; she knew nothing of any sketching. and another thing — don’t you see what those things mean?” he pointed toward the place of the little wire loops.
“not at all.”
“man, don’t you see they’ve been boot-buttons? when the boots shrivelled, the threads were burnt and the buttons dropped off. boot-buttons are made of a sort of composition that burns to a grey ash, once the fire really gets hold of them — as you may try yourself, any time you please. you can see the ash still clinging to some of the shanks; and there the shanks are, lying in two groups, six and six, as they fell! now peytral came out in laced shoes.”
“but if peytral isn’t dead, where is he?”
“precisely,” rejoined hewitt, with the curious expression still in his eyes. “as you say, where is he? and as you said before, who is the dead man? who is the dead man, and where is peytral, and why has he gone? don’t you see the possibilities of the case now?”
light broke upon me suddenly. i saw what hewitt meant. here was a possible explanation of the whole thing — peytral’s recent change of temper, his evening prowlings, his driving away of bowmore, and lastly, of his disappearance — his flight, as it now seemed probable it was. the case had taken a strange turn, and we looked at one another with meaning eyes. it might be that hewitt, begged by the unhappy girl we had but just left to prove the innocence of her lover, would by that very act bring her father to the gallows.
“poor girl!” hewitt murmured, as we stood staring at one another. “better she continued to believe him dead, as she does! brett, there’s many a good man would be disposed to fling these proofs away for the girl’s sake and her mother’s, seeing how little there can be to hurt bowmore. but justice must be done, though the blow fall — as it commonly does — on innocent and guilty together. see, now, i’ve another idea. stay on guard while i try.”
he hurried out toward the farther side of the broad band of trampled ground which surrounded the burnt barn, and began questing to and fro, this way and that, receding farther from me as he went, and nearing the horse-pond and the road. at last he vanished altogether, and left me alone with the burnt barn, my thoughts, and — that dim shape on the barn floor. it was broad day, but i felt none too happy; and i should not have been at all anxious to keep the police watch at night.
perhaps hewitt had been gone a quarter of an hour, perhaps a little more, when i saw him again, hurrying back and beckoning to me. i went to meet him.
“it’s right enough,” he cried. “i’ve come on his trail again! there it is, thorn-mark and all, by the roadside, and at a stile — going to redfield — probably to the station. come, we’ll follow it up! where’s that fool of a policeman? oh, the muddle they can make when they really try!”
“need we wait for him?” i asked.
“yes, better now, with those proofs lying there; and we must tell him not to be bounced off again as i bounced him off. there he comes!”
the heavy figure of the local policeman was visible in the distance, and we shouted and beckoned to hurry him. agility was no part of that policeman’s nature, however, and beyond a sudden agitation of his head and his shoulders, which we guessed to be caused by a dignified spasm of leisurely haste, we saw no apparent acceleration of his pace.
as we stood and waited we were aware of a sound of wheels from the direction of redfield, and as the policeman neared us from the right, so the sound of wheels approached us from the left. presently a fly hove in sight — the sort of dusty vehicle that plies at every rural railway station in this country; and as he caught sight of us in the road the driver began waving his whip in a very singular and excited manner. as he drew nearer still he shouted, though at first we could not distinguish his words. by this time the policeman, trotting ponderously, was within a few yards. the passenger in the fly, a thin, dark, elderly man, leaned over the side to look ahead at us, and with that the policeman pulled up with a great gasp and staggered into the ditch.
“‘ere ‘e is!” cried the fly-driver, regardless of the angry remonstrances of his fare. “‘ere ‘e is! ‘e’s all right! it ain’t ’im! ‘ere he is!”
“shut your mouth, you fool!” cried the angry fare. “will you stop making a show of me?”
“not me!” cried the eccentric cabman. “i don’t want no fare, sir! i’m drivin’ you ‘ome for honour an’ glory, an’ honour an’ glory i’ll make it! ‘ere ‘e is!”
hewitt took in the case in a flash — the flabbergasted policeman, the excited cabman and the angry passenger. he sprang into the road and cried to the cabman, who pulled up suddenly before us.
“mr. victor peytral, i believe?” said martin hewitt.
“yes, sir,” answered the dark gentleman snappishly, “but i don’t know you!”
“there has been a deal of trouble here, mr. peytral, over your absence from home, as no doubt you have become aware; and i was telegraphed for by your daughter. my name is hewitt — martin hewitt.”
peytral’s face changed instantly. “i know your name well, mr. hewitt,” he said. “there’s a matter — but who is this?”
“my friend, mr. brett, who is good enough to help me to-day. if i may detain you a moment, i should like a word with you aside.”
“certainly.”
mr. peytral alighted, and the two walked a little apart.
i saw hewitt talking and pointing toward the burnt barn, and i well guessed what he was saying. he was giving peytral warning of what he had discovered in the barn, explaining that he must give the information to the police, and asking if, in those circumstances, peytral wished to go home, or to make other arrangements. often hewitt’s duty to his clients and his duty as a law-upholding citizen between them put him in some such delicate position.
but there was no hesitation in mr. victor peytral. plainly he feared nothing, and he was going home.
“very well, then,” i heard hewitt say as they turned towards us, “perhaps we had better go on slowly and let my friend cut across the fields first to break the news. brett — i knew you would be useful, sooner or later.”
and so i hurried off, with the happy though delicate mission to restore both father and lover to miss claire peytral.
